The men of the Los Angeles International Church of Christ were increasingly filled “with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction” in the month of September. It began with the decision to host Men’s Forums in each of the 10 Regions of the church on the weekend of October 2-4. Inspired by our women hosting their Women’s Days and by the tremendously successful Men’s Day recently held in Mexico City, we decided to mobilize our men. Earlier this year, under the leadership of World Sector Leader Peter Garcia-Bengochea, the 1,037 men of the Mexico City Church had an attendance of 5,000 at a hard-hitting spiritually-oriented men’s event. Following their lead, we designed our Men’s Forum to be much more than an evangelistic service. We wanted it to be both a revival for our men and an opportunity to share our faith with our friends.
Superbowl XXX is history now. Yes, I am happy that Dallas won; I can’t shake my Texas heritage. On Superbowl Sunday I stood before our Church service with a challenge. I knew that in just a few hours we would all be yelling our heads off for our favorite team. Yet the audience was showing little more enthusiasm to be in an assembly with God and his angels than they would show at a funeral. Christianity is not meant to be passive. Take the Superbowl test. Are you as fired up in your daily Christian walk as the football crowd is at the game? Of course, we can hype ourselves and our assemblies without the energy coming from the heart, but then it is just hype, not the Spirit of God. As we grow in size and age as a movement, let us never become so sophisticated” that we lose our childlike excitement as we see God working.
A new chapter was written in Johannesburg, South Africa. In June of 1986, Gloria and I watched religious history unfold as 22 disciples, both blacks and whites sent out by the Boston Church, flew into Johannesburg. While the two of us were there just for the first service, the 22 disciples came to live and to plant a church that would demonstrate love between the races in the midst of apartheid, the cruel philosophy and law of the land that separated the races. Since then, apartheid has died, but the Johannesburg Church of Christ with a regular Sunday attendance of 2,000 – half blacks and half whites hugging and singing together – has become a beacon of light for the Dark Continent.
